Richard Corrigan: ‘St Patrick’s Day is a passport to party – these are my favourite places for the best craic’
With St Patrick’s Day at the weekend, the most famous London Irish chef is a busy man. Not too busy to tell Hannah Twiggs why he launched his legendary annual party 10 years ago, and where he thinks you should head to to find the best Irish food (and perfect pint of Guinness)
St Patrick’s Day celebrations looked quite different when chef Richard Corrigan was growing up in County Meath, just north of Dublin, in the Sixties and Seventies.
“When I was a kid, it was church in the morning, it was lunch, it was shamrock and cowslips, there was no parade-y kind of stuff,” he tells me, having just arrived back in the UK after hosting a pop-up in Washington. Even with the biggest Irish holiday looming, he’s a busy man. Jet lag will either be a curse or a blessing come the weekend. “It wasn’t even really an Irish thing, it was more of a religious holiday.
“For the immigrants and for other people, St Patrick’s Day has become so much bigger.” True, over 150,000 people celebrate it in London alone. Roughly 13 million pints of Guinness will be consumed. You do the maths. “It’s become more for the non-Irish than the Irish! It’s like a passport to a party, d’you know what I mean?”
I know exactly what he means. St Paddy’s has become one of the biggest dates in a food journalist’s calendar. Festivities will kick off on Friday at Corrigan’s Mayfair, the flagship restaurant he opened in 2008, where shamrock-adorned industry types will start proceedings with champagne and oysters at 9am, followed by a day of essentially pub-crawling in search of London’s best Guinness. Very few in attendance can claim to have Irish blood in our veins. I, for one, have none.
Last year, the party was held at Daffodil Mulligan, Corrigan’s restaurant in Shoreditch, where the bar below, Gibney’s, serves one of the best pints of the black stuff in the UK. I would know – Cormac Gibney greets me by name and a rib-crushing hug these days. “Last year, I remember getting on the Vespa and heading over to Daffodil Mulligan”, Richard says, “and I looked at the queue of young people to get into the bar. It was down the street, I swear to god! I was the proudest person in London that day.”
We have Corrigan to thank for the hangover every 18th of March, then. Ten years ago, “there wasn’t much going on on St Patrick’s Day. That’s why I started it. I’m not a cheerleader for the Christian part of St Patrick’s Day, but I am a cheerleader for the other side of raising a glass and a cheer for life and breathing fresh air, that’s for sure.”
Back then, he was on the committee lobbying then London mayor Ken Livingstone to get a St Patrick’s Day parade in Trafalgar Square. “The first one I went to, it was the Irish of the Metropolitan Police marching and it was quite emotional to see. By god, it’s taken all this time to get St Patrick’s Day into Parliament Square through the indifferences and issues with everything over the bloody 35 years,” he says. “I just felt something had totally changed. We could all feel it. It was like, when does a place become your home?”
When you make it, I venture, and Corrigan agrees. “I think it’s inevitable that you become London Irish after the length of time I’ve been here.”
Corrigan left Dublin when he was 17 to work at a hotel in the Netherlands that was later awarded a Michelin star. After four years, in 1985, he moved to London and started to work in kitchens. He’s been here ever since, though his accent has hardly changed at all.
“My memories of Ireland are set in stone. Whenever you go back – I do and in many ways, I’ve never left – it’s slightly different. You have a broader mind, a broader humour. You’re less interested in the small parochial things, you have a much broader view of the world.”
Born in Ireland, but raised in London, it is a familiar tale of fitting in neither here nor there, not entirely. Perhaps that’s why he’s so happy to see people, of any country or colour, celebrating St Patrick’s Day. “I think we blend in bl**** well and we bring everyone along. We sing your songs better than you [he loves Irish folk music, but most songs are just old English, he says], we party better than you, and everyone tags along. It really is the Pied Piper’s march.”
He is happy to see the next generation of Irish in London filling the space he started to carve out for them in the Eighties. “I think Robin and Sarah Gill’s Darby’s is just a fantastic spot,” he says. Dublin-born Robin Gill is another Irishman in London, who makes up the trifecta of most-mentioned this side of the Irish Sea: Corrigan, The Devonshire’s Oisin Rogers and Gill.
There’s also The George in Fitzrovia. Similar to The Devonshire, it offers a very particular breed of pub you’d be hard-pressed to find this close to Oxford Circus. “I think Connor, Nicola and Colin [the proprietors] are a brilliant trio. I think they are definitely the next gen. They have a coolness about them. That’s certainly one of my favourite places.”
He’s also happy to see greater recognition of Irish cuisine more broadly. Of course, he would recommend Irish Stew at Corrigan’s Mayfair: “I’ve been making Irish stew in London for 35 years. No one would buy it when I called it Irish stew so I used to call it a white tub of lamb. Even Fay Maschler [essentially the founder of food criticism], god bless her, found the funny side of that.”
Perhaps that’s why he’s so fond of Anna Haugh, the chef and owner of Myrtle restaurant in Chelsea, which serves modern European food with an Irish influence. “I love Anna. Anna’s worked with Gordon, she’s worked with everyone. Anna said something to me: ‘There’s something deeply wonderful about the Irish woman.’ The honesty, integrity and absolute straightforwardness of our Anna Haugh… she’s just one of the shining lights of Irish women in London. And I am really glad she is in London because she’s so generous, and that is so, so important.”
Aside from that, “The Prince Arthur in E8 has some pretty epic-sounding dishes. Guinness madeleines, Irish tiramisu… f***ing hell, what’s not to be pleased about that?”
I’d been wondering how long it would take for Oisin Rogers, fondly known as Ois, to come up, but you can hardly talk about notable Irish London residents, or those that do hospitality well, without mentioning him. After he left The Guinea Grill in 2022, he opened The Devonshire, undeniably the most talked about new pub in possibly the whole of the UK, with Flat Iron’s Charlie Carroll in November. Based in Picadilly, its restaurant is booked out for months, praised by critics and punters alike.
“All things black and white, Guinness and all the nonsense that goes with it, I served the tastiest pint in London and it’s called Gibney’s Stout and it’s at Daffodil Mulligan. It’s not some pasteurised pint of darker black and white, you understand?” Yes, Richard. “Let’s get that clear with Ois straightaway.” I’ll be sure to tell him, I say.
But, “I think Ois represents everything I believe a landlord should be. He’s there. He’s greeting his guests. What makes a great pub is the landlord, and he’s exactly that. He’s done a fabulous job.” So, I tentatively ask, The Devonshire makes the cut? “Christ, yeah. Absolutely,” Corrigan says, then adds: “I mean, there’s the next generation under Oisin and he better watch his ass because there’s some great people coming behind him.”
Richard Corrigan’s favourite Irish pubs and restaurants in the capital
Darby’s
Named after chef and co-owner Robin Gill’s trumpet-playing father, Darby’s is a quintessential neighbourhood restaurant, with a NYC-inspired oyster bar, large open grill and bakery. From the husband and wife duo behind Sorella and Bermondsey Larder (formerly known as The Dairy), who are lauded in the industry as much for their cooking as their hospitality, comes the perfect spot for every occasion, from a post-work catchup over negronis to a full-on blowout. With the best ingredients across England and Ireland, expect native oysters and Guinness, plenty of seafood as well as steak and freshly baked pastries to make you swoon.
The George
In an 18th-century, Grade II-listed public house on Great Portland Street, you’ll find a gem of a gastropub with no-nonsense pub grub executed with the flair of fine dining restaurateurs. Expect reinvented classics like black pudding Scotch egg, beef and Guinness pie with clotted cream mash and a chilli and coriander cheese toastie. Legends of the game, Connor, Nicola and Colin, have made it as welcoming as an extension of your living room, albeit with Irish coffee and a great beer and wine selection.
Myrtle
After years in some of London’s biggest kitchens, Anna Haugh’s first solo restaurant Myrtle is her chance to shine – and it does. Think modern European food with an Irish flair. From her yellow meal cake, Silver Hill duck and endive, inspired by the corn eaten by Irish people during the potato famine, to the Queen Meabh, inspired by the Irish folklore legend Queen of Connaught, Haugh is putting Irish cuisine firmly on the map.
The Prince Arthur
There’s a proper neighbourhood feel about The Prince Arthur, but besides being a great pub, the food is brilliant. There’s small plates and large plates – there always is in this part of town – but you can expect the likes of British sobrasada croquettes and pan-fried sweet breads with tagliatelle and forestière sauce. A proper East End boozer but with a polished menu of sort-of old-school delights.
The Devonshire
With a £29 set menu, it’s got to be one of the cheapest lunches/dinners in this part of town. It’s a pub done proper downstairs – get your elbows out because there’ll be plenty of jostling for a spot by the Guinness tap – and two restaurant spaces upstairs dominated by an open grill. The steaks are enormous, and delicious, but don’t miss out on the langoustines, Nigella’s favourite potted shrimps or the pea and ham soup (no, really). Spend a little, spend a lot; either way, you’re in for a treat.
The Cow
Renowned for its Guinness and oysters, The Cow is a great spot to spend a few hours on St Patrick’s Day. Their party has become quite legendary and you’re guaranteed to meet a few characters. On any day of the week, there’s prime pub fare, with Northern European influences, such as fish stew, bangers and mash with onion gravy or their famous deluxe seafood platter. Not your bag? There’s also prawns by the pint (no, really).
40ft Brewery
Irish oysters, food from the Acme Fire Cult team and their own brew... what more could you possibly want? Acme Fire Cult uses the by-products of 40ft’s brewing in their dishes, and 40ft uses some of Acme’s favourite ingredients (such as ancho chillies) in their beers. The result is delicious beer from one place, and mind-blowing food from another. Two 20ft shipping containers (hence the name) serving 8,000 pints a week from 10 taps brewed on-site is a rather cool way to while away the hours.
The Bloomsbury Hotel
Corrigan is a huge fan of all The Doyle Collection’s properties, but The Bloomsbury Hotel is a favourite. Over the weekend they’ll have incredible Irish musicians playing in the Bloomsbury Club (under the Coral Room). These guys know what Irish hospitality is all about.
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